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Type physicalism (also known as Type Identity Theory, Mind-Brain Identity Theory and Identity Theory of Mind) is a theory, in philosophy of mind, which asserts that mental events are type-identical to the physical events in the brain with which they are correlated. Philosophy of mind is the branch of Philosophy that studies the nature of the Mind, Mental events Mental functions mental properties A mental event is a particular occurrence of something going on in the Mind or mind substitute In Probability theory and Statistics, correlation, (often measured as a correlation coefficient) indicates the strength and direction of a linear The thesis of type physicalism is that mental event types (for example, pains) are identical, perhaps contingently, with specific physical event types in the brain (for example, C-fiber firings). Physicalism is a philosophical position holding that everything which exists is no more extensive than its Physical properties; that is that there are no kinds of things other

It is called type identity in order to distinguish it from a similar but distinct theory called the token identity theory. Anomalous monism is a philosophical thesis about the mind-body relationship. The type-token distinction is easily illustrated by way of example. The type versus token distinction separates an abstract concept from the objects which are particular instances of the concept In the phrase "yellow is yellow is yellow is yellow", there are only two types of words ("yellow" and "is") but there are seven tokens (four "yellow" and three "is" tokens).

Contents

Background

According to U.T. Place[1], one of the popularizers of the idea of type-identity in the 1950s and 1960s, the idea of type-identity physicalism originated in the 1930s with the psychologist E. G. Boring and took nearly a quarter of a century to gain acceptance from the philosophical community. Ullin Place (1924 – 2000 was a British philosopher and psychologist Edwin Garrigues Boring ( October 23, 1886 - July 1, 1968) was an experimental psychologist who later became one of the first Historians Boring, in a book entitled The Physical Dimensions of Consciousness (1933) wrote that:

To the author a perfect correlation is identity. Two events that always occur together at the same time in the same place, without any temporal or spatial differentiation at all, are not two events but the same event. The mind-body correlations as formulated at present, do not admit of spatial correlation, so they reduce to matters of simple correlation in time. The need for identification is no less urgent in this case (p. 16, quoted in Place [unpublished]).

The barrier to the acceptance of any such vision of the mind, according to Place, was that philosophers and logicians had not yet taken a substantial interest in questions of identity and referential identification in general. The dominant epistemology of the logical positivists at that time was phenomenalism, in the guise of the theory of sense-data. Epistemology (from Greek επιστήμη - episteme, "knowledge" + λόγος, " Logos " or theory of knowledge Logical positivism (later and more accurately called logical empiricism) is a school of philosophy that combines Empiricism, the idea that observational evidence is In Epistemology and the Philosophy of perception, phenomenalism is the view that physical objects do not exist as things in themselves but only as perceptual Indeed Boring himself subscribed to the phenomenalist creed, attempting to reconcile it with an identity theory and this resulted in a reductio ad absurdum of the identity theory, since brain states would have turned out, on this analysis, to be identical to colors, shapes, tones and other sensory experiences.

The revival of interest in the work of Gottlob Frege and his ideas of sense and reference on the part of Herbert Feigl and J.J.C. Smart, along with the discrediting of phenomenalism through the influence of the later Wittgenstein and J.L. Austin, led to a more tolerant climate toward physicalistic and realist ideas. Friedrich Ludwig Gottlob Frege ( 8 November 1848, Wismar, Grand Duchy of Mecklenburg-Schwerin  &ndash 26 July 1925 Senses are the physiological methods of Perception. The senses and their operation classification and theory are overlapping topics studied by a variety of fields In general a reference is a relation between objects in which one object designates by linking to another object Herbert Feigl ( December 14, 1902 &ndash June 1, 1988) was an Austrian Philosopher John Jamieson Carswell "Jack" Smart AC (born 1920 often referred to as J John Langshaw Austin ( March 26, 1911 – February 8, 1960) was a British philosopher of language, born in Lancaster and Logical behaviorism emerged as a serious contender to take the place of the Cartesian "ghost in the machine" and, although not lasting very long as a dominant position on the mind/body problem, its elimination of the whole realm of internal mental events was strongly influential in the formation and acceptance of the thesis of type identity. Behaviorism or Behaviourism, also called the learning perspective (where any physical action is a behavior is a philosophy of Psychology based on the

Versions of type identity theory

There were actually subtle but interesting differences between the three most widely credited formulations of the type-identity thesis, those of Place, Feigl and Smart which were published in several articles in the late 1950s. However, all of the versions share the central idea that the mind is identical to something physical.

U. T. Place

Main article: Ullin Place

U. Ullin Place (1924 – 2000 was a British philosopher and psychologist T. Place's (1956) notion of the relation of identity was derived from Bertrand Russell's distinction among several types of is statements: the is of identity, the is of equality and the is of composition. Bertrand Arthur William Russell 3rd Earl Russell, OM, FRS (18 May 1872 – 2 February 1970 was a British Philosopher, Historian In Philosophy, identity (also called sameness) is whatever makes an entity definable and recognizable in terms of possessing a set of qualities or characteristics Place's version of the relation of identity is more accurately described as a relation of composition. For Place, higher-level mental events are composed out of lower-level physical events and will eventually be analytically reduced to these. So, to the objection that "sensations" do not mean the same thing as "mental processes", Place could simply reply with the example that "lightning" does not mean the same thing as "electrical discharge" since we determine that something is lightning by looking and seeing it, whereas we determine that something is an electrical discharge through experimentation and testing. Nevertheless, "lightning is an electrical discharge" is true since the one is composed of the other.

Feigl and Smart

For Feigl (1957) and Smart (1959), on the other hand, the identity was to be interpreted as the identity between the referents of two descriptions (senses) which referred to the same thing, as in "the morning star" and "the evening star" both referring to Venus. Herbert Feigl ( December 14, 1902 &ndash June 1, 1988) was an Austrian Philosopher John Jamieson Carswell "Jack" Smart AC (born 1920 often referred to as J So to the objection about the lack of equality of meaning between "sensation" and "brain process", their response was to invoke this Fregean distinction: "sensations" and "brain" processes do indeed mean different things but they refer to the same physical phenomenon. Moreover, "sensations are brain processes" is a contingent, not a necessary, identity.

Criticism and replies

Multiple realizability

Main article: multiple realizability

One of the most influential and common objections to the type identity theory is the argument from multiple realizability. Multiple realizability, in Philosophy of mind, is the thesis that the same mental property state or event can be implemented by different physical properties states Multiple realizability, in Philosophy of mind, is the thesis that the same mental property state or event can be implemented by different physical properties states The multiple realizability thesis asserts that mental states can be realized in multiple kinds of systems, not just brains, for example. Since the identity theory identifies mental events with certain brain states, it does not allow for mental states to be realized in organisms or computational systems that do not have a brain. This is in effect an argument that the identity theory is too narrow because it does not allow for organisms without brains to have mental states. However, token identity (where only particular tokens of mental states are identical with particular tokens of physical events) and functionalism both account for multiple realizability. Functionalism is a theory of the mind in contemporary Philosophy, developed largely as an alternative to both the Identity theory of mind and Behaviourism

The response of type identity theorists, such as Smart, to this objection is that, while it may be true that mental events are multiply realizable, this does not demonstrate the falsity of type identity. As Smart states:

"The functionalist second order [causal] state is a state of having some first order state or other which causes or is caused by the behavior to which the functionalist alludes. In this way we have a second order type theory. "

The fundamental point is that it is extremely difficult to determine where, on the continuum of first order processes, type identity ends and merely token identities begin. Take Quine's example of English country gardens. In such gardens, the tops of hedges are cut into various shapes, for example the shape of an elf. We can make generalizations over the type elf-shaped hedge only if we abstract away from the concrete details of the individual twigs and branches of each hedge. So, whether we say that two things are of the same type or are tokens of the same type because of subtle differences is just a matter of descriptive abstraction. The type-token distinction is not all or nothing. [2]

Hilary Putnam responds to Smart's response by essentially rejecting functionalism because, he believes, it is indeed a second-order type identity theory. Hilary Whitehall Putnam (born July 31 1926 is an American Philosopher who has been a central figure in Western philosophy since the 1960s especially in Philosophy Putnam uses multiple realizability against functionalism itself, suggesting that mental events (or kinds, in Putnam's terminology) may be diversely implemented by diverse functional/computational kinds; there may be only a token identification between particular mental kinds and particular functional kinds. Putnam, and many others who have followed him, now tend to identify themselves as generically non-reductive physicalists. Physicalism is a philosophical position holding that everything which exists is no more extensive than its Physical properties; that is that there are no kinds of things other Putnam's invocation of multiple realizability does not, of course, directly answer the problem raised by Smart with respect to useful generalizations over types and the flexible nature of the type-token distinction in relation to causal taxonomies in science.

Qualia

Main article: qualia

Another frequent objection is that type identity theories fail to account for phenomenal mental states (or qualia), such as having a pain, feeling sad, experiencing nausea. " Qualia " (ˈkwɑːliə is "an unfamiliar term for something that could not be more familiar to each of us the ways things seem to us" " Qualia " (ˈkwɑːliə is "an unfamiliar term for something that could not be more familiar to each of us the ways things seem to us" (Qualia are merely the subjective qualities of conscious experience. Consciousness has been defined loosely as a constellation of attributes of Mind such as Subjectivity, Self-awareness, Sentience, and the An example is the way the pain of jarring your elbow feels to you. ) Arguments can be found in Saul Kripke (1972) and David Chalmers (1996), for example, according to which the identity theorist cannot identify phenomenal mental states with brain states (or any other physical state for that matter) because one has a sort of direct awareness of the nature of such qualitative mental states, and their nature is qualitative in a way that brain states are not.

A famous formulation of the qualia objection comes from Frank Jackson (1982) in the form of the Mary's room thought experiment. Frank Jackson may refer to Frank Cameron Jackson (born 1943 a professor of philosophy at the Australian National University Frank Lawson Mary's room (also known as Mary the super-scientist) is a philosophical Thought experiment proposed by Frank Jackson in his article "Epiphenomenal Let us suppose, Jackson suggests, that a particularly brilliant super-scientist named Mary has been locked away in a completely black-and-white room her entire life. Over the years in her colour-deprived world she has studied (via black-and-white books and television) the sciences of neurophysiology, vision and electromagnetics to their fullest extent; eventually Mary comes to know all the physical facts there are to know about experiencing colour. When Mary is released from her room and experiences colour for the first time, does she learn something new? If we answer "yes" (as Jackson suggests we do) to this question, then we have supposedly denied the truth of type physicalism, for if Mary has exhausted all the physical facts about experiencing colour prior to her release, then her subsequently acquiring some new piece of information about colour upon experiencing its quale reveals that there must be something about the experience of colour which is not captured by the physicalist picture. " Qualia " (ˈkwɑːliə is "an unfamiliar term for something that could not be more familiar to each of us the ways things seem to us" (See Mary's room page for full discussion). Mary's room (also known as Mary the super-scientist) is a philosophical Thought experiment proposed by Frank Jackson in his article "Epiphenomenal

The type identity theorist, such as Smart, attempts to explain away such phenomena by insisting that the experiential properties of mental events are topic-neutral. The concept of topic-neutral terms and expressions goes back to Gilbert Ryle, who identified such topic-neutral terms as "if", "or", "not", "because" and "and. Gilbert Ryle ( 19 August 1900 - 6 October 1976) was a British Philosopher, and a representative of the generation of " If one were to hear these terms alone in the course of a conversation, it would be impossible to tell whether the topic under discussion concerned geology, physics, history, gardening or selling pizza. For the identity theorist, sense-data and qualia are not real things in the brain (or the physical world in general) but are more like "the average electrician. " The average electrician can be further analyzed and explained in terms of real electricians but is not itself a real electrician.

See also

Notes

  1. ^ Place, Ullin (1956). Consciousness has been defined loosely as a constellation of attributes of Mind such as Subjectivity, Self-awareness, Sentience, and the Eliminative materialism (also called eliminativism) is a materialist position in the Philosophy of mind. In the Philosophy of mind, emergent (or emergentist) materialism is a theory which asserts that the Mind is an irreducible existent in some sense The Philosophy of materialism holds that the only thing that can be truly proven to exist is Matter, and is considered a form of Physicalism. Philosophy of mind is the branch of Philosophy that studies the nature of the Mind, Mental events Mental functions mental properties Monism is the metaphysical and Theological view that all is one that all reality is subsumed under the most fundamental category of being or existence Philosophy of mind is the branch of Philosophy that studies the nature of the Mind, Mental events Mental functions mental properties Physicalism is a philosophical position holding that everything which exists is no more extensive than its Physical properties; that is that there are no kinds of things other In the Philosophy of time, presentism is the Belief that only the present exists and the Future and the Past are unreal "Is Consciousness a Brain Process?". British Journal of Psychology
  2. ^ Example at http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/mind-identity/

References and further reading

External links

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